welcome to my little suburban oasis, filled with flowers,fruit trees and vegetables

Sunday 27 January 2013

Picked this week 27th January 2013


On our brief trip to the allotment I managed - in between clearing snow from brassicas - to pick a bit of kale untouched by pigeons and get hubby to lift some leeks.

 If we were solely eating our produce, dinners would be a constant round of leek and potato soup with kale floating in it :(





Friday 25 January 2013

Allotment in the snow


We decided yesterday to have a trip to the allotment - the first since the snow began.
We didn't take the car though somebody had tried to from the tyre marks.


 Everything was pretty much ok apart from the kale which hadn't been covered by netting. Before the snow it being ignored but with the bad weather the birds (pigeons mainly) are searching for every scrap of food - unfortunately they liked the look of my dinner.




 With more snow forecast for this weekend (it's falling as I blog) we thought it best to clear the polytunnel roof and the tops of the coldframe. Surprisingly, the lettuce in there seems ok.



 The netted brassicas were protected from both birds and the weight of the snow but I decided to clear them as best I could before the poles collapsed.

Maybe this weekend will see the end of this cold snap and we'll be back to proper gardening.

Thursday 24 January 2013

While the snow falls.....



...there's not a lot to be done outdoors. Hubby cleaned the inside of the home greenhouse while I stayed inside, where it's warmer, and sorted through seeds and making lists ....of what we have, what we'll need to buy and what we can be thinking about setting once the weather gets back above freezing.








Tuesday 22 January 2013

A Second Week of Snow


Winter jasmine outside the kitchen window is the only spot of colour in the garden right now.







 




 The first snow of this winter fell last Monday, never thawed away and over the weekend more was added to it.





The bird table is suddenly busy with sparrows, blackbirds, robins, blue-, coal- and longtailed tits and more unusual visitors - redwings and fieldfares - in trees and bushes





 the vegetable patch is hidden...




...and the greenhouse almost is!

 the old play house looks like a cabin in the forest
 and plantpots have acquired strange new shapes
We're now watching the weather forecasts and wondering how much longer this will last.....

Monday 14 January 2013

More Snow!!


 More snow overnight and earlier today.



 even the neighbours' dreadful leylandii look pretty!

Picked this week - 13th January 2013

Only had a quick trip to the allotment this week - it's been freezing most days though the sunshine was tempting. Anyway I managed to find some kale and cabbagey bits for dinner - and, surprisingly, lettuce and land cress for lunch (but I ate them straight away before taking a pic!)

Sunday 13 January 2013

Snow!!

First snowfall of this winter - more expected any day now!

Monday 7 January 2013

Tidying up and New Year surprises


 Yesterday was quite mild - and dry for a chance - so I thought it was time to tackle the mess that is the back garden. Having chopped down and pulled up this pile of rubbish.....




 ...I found not only new growth on the montbretia....


















but also lots of snowdrops peeping through





















and wallflowers in bud!






I just hope everything survives frosts and snow still to come before Spring.

Sunday 6 January 2013

Picked this week - 6th January 2013


First harvest of the year!

Parsnips and leeks from the allotment





and a handful of american land cress from the garden to add variety to my cabbage-based salads

Thursday 3 January 2013

Cyclamens

There's not a lot of colour out in the garden, so I'm making up for that with my growing indoor cyclamen collection!

Tuesday 1 January 2013

New Year



  The garden isn't looking at its best this time of year - mainly full of died-back plants that I should have cleared up.







 .....with seed heads left on michaelmas daisies







and honesty
















 but here and there are some flowers -


 the winter jasmine


 campanula creeping along under the doorstep



the first forsythia flower

 and some daffodils bulbs getting excited by the mild weather